The Short-Courtright duel

One of the most legendary duels of Wild West history occurred on February 8, 1887. The infamous former marshal of Fort Worth, the feared “Longhaired” Jim Courtright, squared off against Luke Short, a gambler and a famous gunfighter in his own right. Each had formidable reputations, but Courtright especially was known for his dexterity with a pistol. The end result perplexed the newspapers¹: Courtright died without managing to fire even a single shot, while Short emptied his revolver into him!

This peculiar fact has invited explanations, most of them based on nothing except fantasies. Some biographers of Courtright, many of whom wanted to lionize the man, had to invent ever more ingenious explanations for Courtright’s inability to fire: Short actually shot him in the back; Short’s first shot took off his thumb and he had to “border shift” it; Courtright’s gun caught on a watch chain, etc. There is no evidence for any of these explanations.

In this article, I will look at the best evidence we have for how the gunfight actually transpired. I will quote the actual witness testimony we have to construct the approximate sequence, and then consider several alternatives for the minutiae. In particular, I will provide an alternative to the common reconstruction, in which Courtright went for his gun first and Short beat him anyway.

I take Short’s and Courtright’s courage and skill to be evident. I don’t think we can confidently say who was the “faster gun”. Nobody in the Wild West was going around with a stopwatch, determining draw speeds. When two men are close to each other and suddenly go for their revolvers, hundreds of little details might determine the outcome; no man can enter such a confrontation expecting certain victory. Both Short and Courtright had killed men. Each had been in gunfights and acquitted themselves well enough. What happened on February 8 was not a comprehensive test of skill, but a singular event.

The background

The origin of the quarrel between Short and Courtright is not known. There were rumors – reported in contemporary papers and enumerated in DeArment’s biography² – that Courtright was shaking down gambling saloon owners, and Short – part-owner of the White Elephant saloon – refused to pay. Dallas Morning News even reported that Courtright had specifically been brought back in to Fort Worth to kill Short³. These were, however, simply rumors. Short never confirmed any of them; he did not claim that Jim had been extorting him or anything of the like.

Whatever the issue had originally been between the men, on the evening of February 7, it had become a matter of honor and respect. According to the court witness W.A. James, Courtright had been complaining loudly about the White Elephant crowd⁴:

The last time I saw Courtright was between 6 and 7 o’clock last night. Night before last I saw him in John Stewart’s saloon and heard him say to an old gentleman … that there was a combination against him over the White Elephant … He said God had made one man superior to another in muscular power, but when Colt made his pistol, that made all men equal. He called Short’s name … Courtright said he had lived over his time. No man on earth … had any percentage over him. He said that this would be settled within a week; that he hadn’t been treated with respect up stairs over the White Elephant.

Note the language here. Courtright is no longer talking about any sum of money. He is talking about respect. Someone at the White Elephant, perhaps Short especially, has not treated him properly. No man has a percentage [edge] on him. He’s going to settle the issue with Short, and if he dies doing so, well, he lived over his time anyway. This is a man preparing to force submission or a fight.

On February 7, Short actually ended up selling his share of the White Elephant to a mutual friend of Courtright and Short: Jake Johnson. Short did this to raise money for his younger brother’s court costs – his brother had killed a man in their hometown⁵. Short still intended to stay in Fort Worth and involved with the White Elephant.

The gunfight

The following evening, on February 8, the issue escalated. Courtright and Johnson came to the White Elephant. Courtright wanted to talk to Short. The men went outside and talked about whatever issues they may have had. The talk happened near Ella Blackwell’s shooting gallery⁴. Witness Jake Johnson – the only third party present – described the situation as follows⁴.

They were three or four feet apart when talking. Luke had his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, then he dropped them in front of him, when Courtright said: “You needn’t be getting out your gun.” Luke said: “I havn’t [sic] got any gun here, Jim,” and raised up his vest to show him … Courtright then pulled his pistol. He drew it first and then Short drew his and commenced to fire.

Johnson’s testimony is substantially the same as Short’s, which he gave to the papers the previous day.

Nearby, policeman Tucker had already been alerted to possible trouble. An excited man had come to him asking for a gun, because something was developing between Short and Courtright¹:

A man … appeared considerably excited, and said that there was going to be trouble between Jim Courtwright and Luke Short … (then) the crack of a pistol rang out … we ran toward the firing, and about the time John Stewart’s corner was reached another shot was heard. Two more reports followed in quick succession, and then a fifth..

Short shot once, there was a pause, and four more shots followed. This is explained by the fact that Courtright stumbled into the door of the shooting gallery and fell inside, as described by Johnson:

When Courtright was shot he fell into the shooting gallery. Courtright got his pistol out of the scabbard before he was shot. He fell at the first fire…

Thus, the pause may be due to Courtright falling through the door of the shooting gallery, causing Short to lose sight of the man for a while. The witnesses inside the gallery, hearing the report of a gun, suddenly saw a man fall in. A Mr. Herring explained⁴:

I was standing in the shooting gallery and heard the report of a large pistol. Courtright fell into the door close to me. The man doing the shooting stepped up to the door and fired four times after Courtright fell. There were five others in the gallery. Didn’t see the beginning of the row..

Another, Mr. Allison, said⁴:

I was behind the counter of the shooting gallery when the trouble came up. When Courtright was falling I saw him pull a pistol out of his pocket. He was pulling it from the right hip pocket. By the time he fell to the floor he had the pistol clear out. He made no effort to shoot … The man that shot him fired one shot while Courtright was falling and three after he fell.

Allison’s testimony is in direct contradiction with Johnson’s, because Allison claimed to see that Courtright was still in the process of drawing his revolver, but Johnson claimed that Courtright’s gun was clear by the time he was shot.

Tucker later described the wounds of Courtright¹. He had been hit once in the right thumb, once in the heart, once in the shoulder, and the heart wound was likely fatal. Policeman Fulford said that Courtright’s rightside gun was in his right hand, and his left gun still in its holster. Courtright had never managed to shift his gun to the left hand nor draw his left-hand revolver. When Fulford examined the gun, the cylinder would not revolve smoothly⁴. It is unknown if the gun developed a mechanical fault at the worst possible time, was broken by Short’s gunfire, or if it was damaged when Courtright fell. Either way, by the time Fulford got to it, it no longer functioned properly. A single-action revolver is typically cocked with the thumb, so the thumb wound, once it occurred, would likely have made it difficult or impossible to operate a revolver with that hand.

We can, then, safely infer that Courtright and Short both went for their guns. Short managed effective fire first, sending Courtright stumbling through the gallery door. Short followed and fired four more times. The wounds were to the heart, right thumb, and shoulder. On examination after the fight, Courtright’s revolver was broken, but the cause or moment this happened is unknown.

What actually happened?

Biographers have tended to take Johnson’s and Short’s statements at face value. I don’t think this is entirely warranted.

First of all, Short has obvious self-interest in making the claim that Courtright drew first. Crucially, though, Johnson also has an interest in keeping his buddy Short out of jail. Short’s reputation as a gunfighter acted, at least partly, as protection for the gambling at White Elephant. Johnson may have sincerely regretted that Courtright had died, but he could no longer be helped. Johnson might have made the statement as stark as he did because he wanted to give his friend the best possible self-defense case.

In fact, Johnson’s testimony came after Herring’s and Allison’s. Those testimonies actually look quite bad for Short. Courtright is shot, stumbles in to the shooting gallery, and then falls to the ground; Short steps up and fires four more times. That doesn’t sound particularly much like self-defense, when one man never even managed to fire his gun, and was still in the process of drawing it!

Johnson’s testimony is, to some extent, defensive in tone. He emphasizes that he was the only one who saw the beginning of the quarrel, that nobody else could have seen it from the shooting gallery. He makes the definitive statement that Jim’s gun was clear before Short fired.

Johnson’s testimony is the fulcrum. If Johnson is substantially accurate and trustworthy, then a version of the standard story follows, which could read something like this:

Short and Courtright are standing near each other, discussing some dispute. Short makes an innocent hand movement to straighten his vest. Courtright misunderstands this, warns Short, then goes for his gun. Short beats him to the effective shot, hitting Courtright’s gun hand in the thumb. Courtright staggers, in shock, into the door of the shooting gallery and stumbles inside. Before he can figure out what is wrong with his hand, Short steps up to the door and keeps firing, killing Courtright. Allison was mistaken to see that Courtright was still drawing his gun.

But on the other hand, if Johnson is totally lying about the sequence, something like this could also fit the evidence:

Short and Courtright are talking. Courtright has been trying to get Short to defer to him. Short thinks he’s had enough of Jim Courtright’s bullying. He’s going to settle the issue right now. Short goes for his gun and catches Courtright totally by surprise. Courtright is immediately struck in the torso, and this is why he staggers and falls at the first fire – possibly, the heart shot came first. Due to his grievous injuries and shock, he cannot get his gun out until he’s lying on the ground, and by that time Short has shot him twice more.

Yet there are, of course, intermediate options. I think a reasonable reconstruction that does not make anyone a liar would be as follows:

Short and Courtright are talking. Courtright makes a movement of some kind that makes Short nervous. He lowers his hands under the pretext of trying to straighten his clothes, to get closer to his gun in case Courtright draws. Courtright warns Short about going for a gun. Johnson, the only other witness there, looks at Courtright because he had just spoken. And then, he sees Jim go for his gun; his attention is fixed on Jim, so in his perception, whatever actually happened, it looks like Jim draws first. Jim is badly injured by Short’s gunfire, stumbles in to the gallery. Short follows and finishes the fight. Later, in the hearing, he hears testimony from two others that makes Short look like the aggressor. But Johnson knows Courtright had initiated the whole trouble. He saw Jim go for the gun first, and Courtright had come looking for trouble. He thinks to himself: “Did Jim actually have the gun clear? Well, he must have had; sure, he had the gun clear”. Witnesses easily confuse the order of events. Allison genuinely thought he saw Courtright draw as he fell, because Jim had not totally completed his draw, or because the gunshot hit had jerked his hand somehow, making it look like he was still drawing.

This is, of course, speculative, one possible attempt at explaining the contradictory witness accounts without assuming anyone lied or was completely mistaken. You could invent a hundred more. In reality, witness testimony is quite unreliable, and it is exceptionally difficult to faithfully remember the order of events in a dangerous gunfight.

Yet I don’t think the “Johnson lying” version can be totally dismissed either.

Aftermath

Jim Courtright’s funeral procession was enormously long; he had many friends in the city⁴. Short had previously given financial assistance to Courtright and his family. He did so again, giving money to Courtright’s widow². The newspapers were, of course, eager to report the gunfight between these two famous “bad men”. One paper declared in breathless terms that Luke Short, “a bad man with a record”, had killed Jim Courtright, another “bad man with a record”, reducing the number of bad men in the West to only four: Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and Luke Short⁶. Luke Short, we are told, is unusual because he had only killed two men. Of course, Doc had only one confirmed kill, Bat two, and Wyatt’s number is likely between 1 and 3, but Short’s legend had not yet supplied a dozen notches on his gun. The framing is interesting: the old social type of “bad man”, of a travelling frontiersman who lived on a dangerous reputation of being a man-killer, was apparently near extinction: you could count them on one hand!

Short was not prosecuted for the killing of Jim Courtright, it being considered a case of self defence. He would live in Fort Worth for the remainder of his life. When a gambler named Wright developed bad blood with him in 1890, Short went to his establishment and forced the patrons out at gunpoint; Wright blasted him with a shotgun, and Short shot him in the hand in response, proving once again his coolness under fire⁵. Short would eventually die in 1893.

This gunfight, being one of the few confirmed face-to-face quick-draw style confrontations of the Wild West, has long attracted commentary. The reality is we cannot know exactly what happened. This was how “bad men” sometimes operated in the Old West: Courtright’s and Short’s reputations clashed. One man had to yield. The personalities of those men being as they were, and both being courageous and skilled with a pistol, neither was so inclined.

1. Fort Worth Daily Gazette, February 9, 1887. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. DeArment. “Jim Courtright of Fort Worth – his life and legend”, Texas Christian University Press, 2004 ↩ ↩²

3. The Dallas Morning News, February 9, 1887. ↩

4. Fort Worth Daily Gazette, February 10, 1887. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

5. DeMattos and Parsons. “The Notorious Luke Short”. UNT Press, 2015. ↩ ↩²

6. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 1, 1887. ↩